NYT: Wal-Mart Announces Drive to Hire Veterans

I blog this story not because it's particularly groundbreaking journalism - its certainly well written and all but is basically announcement coverage - but because it shows what you can get away with if you have more money than Croesus.

In a statement, the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has led a campaign by the White House to encourage businesses to hire veterans, called the Wal-Mart plan “historic,” adding that she planned to urge other corporations to follow suit.

Wal-Mart's last coverage of note in The New York Times was a multi-part series about their unforgivable bribery of Mexican officials to grow that basically showed at best willful disregard for American laws against bribing foreign officials as well as utter contempt for Mexico's right to manage its development and growth.

Today, they have feature coverage of a hiring initiative with the blessing of First Lady Obama. The story gives extensive lip service to how much Wal-Mart likes have employees with military experience but it's nakedly a PR coup for a company that really needed one.

Most companies who get caught committing fraud on the level Wal-Mart did are stuck with the consequences. This story is a tremendous example of how you fix problems that can be fixed with money if you are the nation's second largest employer (the biggest is the U.S. Postal Service).